Karol Szymanowski (1881–1937), the most important Polish composer after Chopin, wrote only two operas, the second of which, King Roger, completed in 1924, is a masterpiece. After decades of neglect this magnificent work has begun to receive more attention around the world, and this first extended study of King Roger investigates its origins, uncovers its ideology, examines its music and documents its history.

hb. 171 pp.
26

In preparation – August 2015
Andrzej Panufnik: Composing Myself

and other texts

Andrzej Panufnik

Preface by Simon Callow

Composing Myself is complemented by the complete programme notes he wrote to shed light on the impulse behind, and design of, his music, complete with the often visually striking diagrams he drew to articulate their formal logic. A third section includes his few other essays, including a 1955 report to the unsuspecting west of the true nature of Polish intellectual life under Communism, an insightful radio broadcast on Szymanowski and a brief tribute to Bartók. Finally, Part IV collects a sample of the interviews that Panufnik – wary of the microphone as a result of his experiences in Communist Poland – gave over the course of his career.

hb. 600 pp.
26

A Musician Divided

André Tchaikowsky in his Own Words

André Tchaikowsky

Edited by Anastasia Belina-Johnson
Foreword by David Pountney

Though André Tchaikowsky (1935–82) was one of the world’s major pianists, his real passion was composition, and his magnum opus an opera based on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The diary he kept from 1974 until his death records the rich but turbulent inner life of this complex character: Jewish survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, homosexual, instinctive radical, literatus, natural wit, loyal but insecure friend, polyglot, outstanding musician.

hb. 434 pp.
72

Truth and Music

The Complete Writings from Music & Musicians, 1957-85

Hans Keller

Edited by Mark Doran

In this collection of almost sixty articles, written for the magazine Music and Musicians between 1957 and 1985, Hans Keller tackles some of the fundamental questions about the nature of music: what makes music great, what constitutes an outstanding performance, and why we listeners respond as we do.

hb. 300 pp.

Martinů's Letters Home

Five Decades of Correspondence with Family and Friends

Bohuslav Martinů

Edited by Iša Popelka
Translated by Ralph Slayton

Martinů left his native Czechoslovakia to study in Paris; the Second World War drove him into exile and the advent of communism kept him there. These 121 letters written to family and friends back home testify to his enduring love for the country he had to leave behind.

In 1940 Britain responded to Hitler’s threatened invasion by interning the refugees, mostly Jewish, who had sought safety on its shores. The Austrian composer Hans Gál kept a diary during his five months of imprisonment, responding to basic living condition and bureaucratic indifference with humour and dignity, his sharp eye recording the strengths and foibles of the men around him.

hb. 243 pp.
c. 50

Ludvig Irgens-Jensen

The Life and Music of a Norwegian Composer

Arvid O. Vollsnes

Ludvig Irgens-Jensen (1894–1969) is one of Norway’s greatest composers, whose noble and dignified music deserves to be far better known abroad; this book, which examines his works in a biographical framework, is an important step in that process. A CD of his music accompanies the book.

hb. 368 pp.

Composing in Words

William Alwyn on his Art

William Alwyn

Edited by Andrew Palmer

William Alwyn was as fine a craftsman in words as he was in notes; this collection of his writings, featuring ‘Ariel to Miranda’, the diary he kept while he was composing his Third Symphony, also contains fascinating reminiscences of British music life, not least of Elgar as a conductor, and a passionate defence of Puccini.

hb. 300 pp.
26 b/w

Stravinsky the Music-Maker

Writings, Prints and Drawings

Hans Keller and Milein Cosman

Foreword by Hugh Wood
Edited by Martin Anderson

The first part of this book, by husband-and-wife team Hans Keller and Milein Cosman, collects all of Keller’s writings on Stravinsky; Part Two presents Cosman’s vibrant drawings and lithographs of Stravinsky conducting. An introduction by Hugh Wood underlines the importance of the Keller-Cosman partnership in British musical life in the second half of the twentieth century.

hb. 242 pp.

Comrades in Art

The Correspondence of Ronald Stevenson and Percy Grainger, 1957-61, with Interviews, Essays and other Writings on Grainger by Ronald Stevenson

Ronald Stevenson, Percy Grainger

Edited by Teresa R. Balough

Percy Grainger and Ronald Stevenson were two kindred spirits – both virtuoso pianists with an interest in world music and a love of Whitman’s poetry. This book presents their complete correspondence and Stevenson’s later writings on Grainger.

hb. 300 pp.
45 b/w

Martinů and the Symphony

Michael Crump

This first full-scale examination of Martinů’s orchestral style ever to be written also analyses each of the six symphonies and other major orchestral works, assessing them as individual works and seeing them in his output as a whole.

hb. 550 pp.
9 half-tones; 199 music exx.

Shostakovich Reconsidered

Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov

With an overture by Vladimir Ashkenazy

Shostakovich Reconsidered, which examines the veracity of the composer’s memoirs, Testimony, establishes beyond any doubt the enormous courage of one of the giants of the age.

hb. pb. 791 pp.
16 b/w

Vaughan Williams and the Symphony

Lionel Pike

Lionel Pike traces the hidden complexities in the Symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, revealing a structural integrity generally overlooked which confirms ‘RVW’ as one of the symphonic giants of twentieth-century music.

Adolf Busch (1891–1952) was the outstanding German violinist of the twentieth century, whose principled refusal to play in Nazi Germany disrupted his career. This monumental two-volume biography documents Busch’s life against the backdrop of his times, complementing the text with two CDs: ‘Busch as Performer’ and ‘Busch as Composer’.

hb. 1432 pp.
145 & 87 b/w

Havergal Brian on Music

Volume Two: European and American Music in his Time

Havergal Brian

Edited by Malcolm MacDonald

This second volume selected from Havergal Brian’s huge journalistic output presents his writings on the European masters of his day, among them Strauss, Mahler, Berg, Busoni and many more, revealing that Brian understood their music like few of his contemporaries.

hb. 458 pp.

Whom the Gods Love

The Life and Music of George Butterworth

Michael Barlow

Forward by Vernon Handley

This is the first full-length study of the life and music of the composer George Butterworth (1885–1916), whose career was cut short by a sniper’s bullet at the Somme.

hb. pb. 204 pp.
26 b/w; 47 music exx.

Ronald Stevenson

The Man and His Music

A Symposium

Edited by Colin Scott-Sutherland
Foreword by Lord Menuhin

Ronald Stevenson is one of Britain’s leading composers, and almost certainly its most prolific. This collection of essays covers virtually all of Stevenson's enormous output and features contributions from leading authorities.

hb. 507 pp.
67 b/w; 79 music exx.

Szymanowski on Music

Selected Writings of Karol Szymanowski

Karol Szymanowski

Edited and Translated by Alistair Wightman

This first comprehensive selection of Szymanowski's writings to be published in English contains all the most important of the composer’s essays and interviews, examining questions of education, musical nationalism, criticism and more; it is preceded by an extensive biographical introduction.

hb. pb. 390 pp.
15 b/w

‘And do you also play the violin?’

Carl F. Flesch

Foreword by Sir Yehudi Menuhin

Carl F. Flesch grew up in the Berlin of the 1920s and early ’30s surrounded by some of the most famous musicians of the day. This is his account of the men and women behind the famous names.

hb. pb. 382 pp.
99 b/w

The Harmonious Musick of John Jenkins

Volume One: The Fantasias for Viols

Andrew Ashbee

This is the first in a two-volume study of Jenkins and his music. After an extensive biographical introduction, it concerns itself with the superb consorts for viols which dominate the early part of Jenkins’ career.

hb. pb. 359 pp.
9 b/w; 148 music exx.

George Enescu

His Life and Music

Noel Malcolm

Preface by Sir Yehudi Menuhin

George Enescu (1881–1955) is one of the neglected giants of modern music; this, the first full-length study of Enescu to be written in the West, charts his development as a composer in a biographical framework.

hb. 320 pp.
58 b/w; 26 music exx.

The Villa-Lobos Letters

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Translated and Edited by Lisa M. Peppercorn
With a Reminiscence of Villa-Lobos by Ralph Gustafson

The Villa-Lobos Letters assembles for the first time the complete surviving correspondence of the outstanding Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), one of the most colourful figures in twentieth-century music.

hb. pb. 212 pp.
40 b/w

Schubert and the Symphony

A New Perspective

Brian Newbould

Schubert and the Symphony is the first full-length study in any language of Schubert’s career as a symphonist. Brian Newbould examines each Symphony for its individuality and shows its relationship to Schubert’s symphonic œuvre as a whole.

hb. pb. 317 pp.
10 b/w; 101 music exx.

Pfitzner's Palestrina

The ‘Musical Legend’ and its Background

Owen Toller

Preface by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Owen Toller discusses the music and the dramatic structure of Pfitzner’s ‘musical legend’ Palestrina in detail, and presents a comprehensive introduction to the background material in the many diverse fields the opera encompasses.

hb. pb. 310 pp.
23 b/w; 89 music exx.

Music, Closed Societies and Football

Hans Keller

First published as 1975 (1984 minus 9)
With the ‘Prague Sketchbook’ of Milein Cosman

This is a passionate defence of individualism. ‘Our age has given up the will to win’, Keller writes, ‘It is this threatening loss my book is about’. Begins with a telling injunction (‘Thinkers of the World, Disunite!’), it contains ‘Vienna, 1938’, Keller’s moving story of his arrest in, and escape from, Nazi Vienna.

hb. 288 pp.
11 b/w

Havergal Brian on Music

Volume One: British Music

Havergal Brian

Edited and introduced by Malcolm MacDonald

Best known as a prolific composer of symphonies, Havergal Brian was also one of the most prolific and insightful music journalists of his day, and this first collection of his writings, selected from his vast journalistic output, brings personal insights into and reminiscences of the British music scene in the first decades of the twentieth century.

hb. pb. 438 pp.
35 music exx.

The Music of E. J. Moeran

Geoffrey Self

Preface by Vernon Handley

Geoffrey Self examines Moeran’s output chronologically, from his early piano and chamber music and tone-poems to the late masterpieces of the Cello Concerto and Cello Sonata.

hb. pb. 288 pp.
26 b/w; 100 music exx.

Experiencing Music

A Composer's Notes

Vagn Holmboe

Translated, Edited, and Introduced by Paul Rapoport
With a Foreword by Robert Simpson

In Experiencing Music Holmboe discusses many issues facing the composer, performer and listener, giving especial attention to the most basic questions about musical experience.

Klemperer writes here about musicians he knew and worked with, dwelling with especial interest and respect on Gustav Mahler, whose personal recommendation was vital in the early successes of Klemperer’s career. An appendix documents Klemperer’s own compositions.

hb. pb. 246 pp.
53 b/w

The Music of Franz Schmidt

Volume 1: The Orchestral Music

Harold Truscott

With Personal Recollections by Hans Keller and the Autobiographical Sketch by Franz Schmidt

A major step in the rediscovery of one of the towering composers of the twentieth century, this first in a series of three brings to Schmidt’s orchestral music – chiefly his four magnificent symphonies – the scholarship it so richly merits.

hb. pb. 190 pp.
17 b/w; 109 music exx.

Dallapiccola on Opera

Selected Writings, Volume One

Luigi Dallapiccola

Foreword by Antal Doráti
Translated and Edited by Rudy Shackelford

Hans Werner Henze called Luigi Dallapiccola ‘a rare example of a very complete humanitarian artist’. This collection of his writings on opera – including works by Mozart, Verdi, Berg and Dallapiccola himself – reveal his enduring importance as critic as well as composer.

hb. pb. 291 pp.
18 b/w; 40 music exx.

The Music of Aaron Copland

Neil Butterworth

Preface by André Previn
With a talk on the piano music between Aaron Copland and Leo Smit

Butterworth’s chronological survey of Copland’s entire output charts the composer’s evolution from radical youth to Grand Old Man of American music.

hb. pb. 262 pp.
34 b/w; 164 music exx.

Beethoven: The Sonatas for Piano and Violin

Thoughts on their Interpretation

Max Rostal

With a Preface by The Amadeus Quartet, a Postscript by Günter Ludwig, and an Appendix by Paul Rolland Translated by Horace and Anna Rosenberg

This book, by one of the violin’s most influential teachers, presents a detailed analysis of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for violin and piano, offering the performer insights gained from decades of experience.

Writings by Sir Adrian Boult, one of Britain’s best-loved musicians, on composers, including such classics as Schubert and his own contemporaries, among them Elgar and Vaughan Williams, on conducting colleagues, among them Nikisch, Toscanini and Furtwängler, on other musicians, such as Menuhin and Glenn Miller, and on conducting itself.